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Robert Darnton

JSKtr

Censorship in Comparative

Perspective France 1789 mdash

East Germany 1989

T H E A D A M H E L M S L E C T U R E 1994

Robert Darnton



East Germany 1989

Svenska Bokfoumlrlaumlggarefoumlreningen

Ordfront

TH E TROUBLE with the history of censorship

is that it looks so simple it pits the children of

light against the children of darkness it suffers

from Manichaeism mdash and understandably so

because who can take a sympathetic view of

someone who defaces a text with a blue pencil or a film with scisshy

sors ( For my part I would not want to impugn the tradition that

leads from Milton and Locke to the Bill of Rights But we need to

understand censorship not merely to deplore it and to undershy

stand it we need to put it in perspective I would like to examine

censorship from a comparative perspective watching it at work

under two old regimes first a regime that ended two centuries ago

in France then a regime that ended only yesterday in East Gershy

many

I would like to limit my discussion to the censorship of books

and by way of illustration to consider a typical book from eighshy

teenth-century France Nouveau Voyage aux isles de lAmeacuterique

(Paris 1722) by Jean-Baptiste Labat For clues about the characshy

ter of publishing under the authoritarian system established by

Louis XTV one can begin with its title page It goes on and on

more like a dust-jacket than a title page of a modern book In

fact its function was similar to that of dust-jacket copy it

summarized and advertised the contents of the book for anyone

3

N O U V E A U

V O Y A G E A U X I S L E S

DE LAMERIQUE CONTENANT

LHISTOIRE NATURELLE DE CES PAYS lOrigine raquo les Mœurs la Religion amp le Gouvershynement des Habitans anciens amp modernes

Les Guerres amp les Evenemens fiumlnguliers qui y Foicircicirct arrivez pendant le long fejour que lAuteur y a faitraquo

Le Commerce amp les Manufactures qui y font eacutetablies amp les moyens de les augmenter

AgraveTCC une Defcription exade amp cttricufauml de toutes ces Mes

Ouvrage enrichi de plus de cent Cartes gt Plansraquo amp Figures en Tailles - douces

TOME PREMIERraquo

A PARIS RUE S JACQUES Chez P I E R R E - F R A N Ccedil O I S G I F F A - I T pregraveraquo

U rue des Mathurins agrave limage Sainte Therefe

laquo i bull bull mdash

M D C C X X I I jivec Jpprohation amp Privilege du poundoygt

who might be interested in reading it The missing element at

least for the modern reader is equally striking the name of the

author It simply does not appear Not that the author tried to

hide his identity his name shows up in the front matter But the

person who really had to answer for the book the man who carshy

ried the legal and financial responsibility for it stands out proshy

minently at the bottom of the page along with his address in

Paris the rue Saint Jacques the shop of Pierre-Franccedilois Giffart

near the rue des Mathurins at the image of Saint Theresa

Since 1275 booksellers had been subjected to the authority of the

university and therefore had to keep shop in the Latin Quarter

They especially congregated in the rue Saint Jacques where

their wrought-iron signs (hence at the image of Saint Thereshy

sa) swung through the air like the branches of a forest The

brotherhood of printers and booksellers dedicated to Saint John

the Evangelist met in the church of the Mathurin Fathers in the

rue des Mathurins near the Sorbonne So this books address

placed it at the heart of the official trade and its super-legal statshy

us was clear in any case by the formula printed at the bottom

with approbation and privilege of the king

Here we encounter the phenomenon of censorship because apshy

probations were formal sanctions delivered by royal censors In this

case there are four approbations all printed at the beginning of the

book and written by the censors who had approved the manuscript

For example one censor a professor at the Sorbonne remarked in

his approbation I had pleasure in reading it it is full of fascinating

things Another who was a professor of botany and medicine

stressed the books usefulness for travelers merchants and students

5

Sftrcvj TZampfACS regle que je meacutetois - preterite-2S les mettre A la tete ou agrave la fin des Tomes afinque le LeagraveTleur pucirct les paffer sil vouloir continuer klecture du Journal ftuf agrave lui agrave y retourner sil le juumlgeoit aproshypos

Jai parleacute de quelques Familleraquo confiderables eacutetablies dans nos Iflesyampjaurois rendu la mecircme juftice agrave beaucoup dautres- fi j a-vois eacuteteacute informeacute plus amplememv de leur origine amp des iervices quelles ont rendus au Prince ampi la Patrie mais ce que jen fccedilavoiraquo par moi-mecircme ne mayant pas pashyru fuffifant pour leur rendre tout laquoe qui leur eft ducirc jattendrai quelles menvoyent des Meacutemoishyres que je ne manquerai pasdemshyployer fi- je les troure conformes a ceux que jai deacutejagrave pardegravevccedilM moi amp aux lumiegraveres quun aufll long feacutejour que celui que jai fait aux Mes ma donneacutelaquolaquo

APPROBATION DV RK J V M E I E I ProfcjfeurtnThnlog de lOrdre du Ff Prtehem bull

J AY lu par lordre du Rcvercndiffimr Pegravere General un Manufciit qui a pour

titre Mtmmes d T fa-Uftszligt UdrUy Miffimuirt de lOrdre des FF Psuhems mraquo

VHihianoMtlU iraquo Pah lai cuduplai-firenlelifant Hy raquo tu tafinueacute-de choies tregraves-curieufes il y mecircme quelqueslairaquo trWurprenans Mai la fimpHciieacute de la iaumlrshyrat on amp la probiteacute de lAuteur font unlaquo-prouve de la Write de ce quil y raquoconte le U-v ai rien trouveacute qui (bit contraire a 1raquo Foi amp aux bonnes laquoceurs A Amiens le if Aoi)tti7Jraquo- -

f 1AGQUES JUumlMELET Prtftfar (V rlilolojit delOrdredesFP Preihiuir

APPROBATION DV RP JotriH Prifijfcitr cnTheoloffic dt Wrdrt dis m Precirccheurs amp Regent

J Aiuml lu par lordre de nocirctre tregraves-Reve-rend Pegravere Provincial un Manulcru qui

aoour titre Memhesdlaquo R P fin - iumlraquoflaquoVt tblttl Miffiomme dt lOrdit dis FF Pie-thmrs tnx Ifles Bnnioifis de lAmtriq gt-Ztnt IHittoirtmlmlIt du Puis ampt Je 1 ai

bull^WlaquoKlraquoWlaquo|K elHsde pMfa i quayaf

bullS moi-mfmeacute durant prefquehuit aritlfr fa plupart des ccedilhofes dont il y eft parleacute je jks ai trouveacute deacutecritelaquo avec une exactitude Si avec une netteteacute qui ne laide tien i fouhai-natter LAuteur entre dans des deacutetails qui icircnltruironc mecircme ceux du Eus- amp par loir feul Livre on peut apprendre en Europe ce quil y raquode plus iniereflant pour nous- agrave lAmeacuteriquelaquo H fera difficile den commngt

bull oer la leciumlure fans eacuteprouver cette douce quoicircquagravevidc curioliteacute qui nous porte agrave pourluivre On ny trouvera riengtjjuifoie contraire agrave la Foi amp aux bonnes mœursraquo Sonneacute i Piris dans ndre Maifon de Saine Honoreacute-ce i7 Aoult 1-71 j

f NICOLAS TOUN Vrofeszligtur eraquo Tbcoitgic del OrdredesSE HUgravebcms-amp Rrrfitu

APPRO B ATION DEM HtNacircY BtsNiFR- DotfeHr Regent en Mdec ne tntVmverfiteacute de Paris tagrave~ ancien Profejfeur de Botanique trnit Ecoles de la Fnculieacute^

Iuml AT lucirc-lvcc une attention liumlngulierelaquo les-Ht moins du R P LibnlrMiffmnxiiumlrtit lOrshy

dre deiPBTtttbtttrsaux tszliges Braneoifes de lA nitrique Ri nagravemonayisnclifiitilcauxvniumla-gturs aux Habitanl dt ce Biicircs gt aux Gomshymerons amp agrave ceux qui sappliquent agrave leacuteshytude de iHiftoire naturelle Les retnarque-s-judicieufes de lAuteur fur ce qui concershyne claquou PattieduMonde Je ucircy le fimole et

laquoonelaquo decesMetrloIras attireront-fanlaquo -Jca-t-lte lapprobation dereux qui ontf onnoiffan-ice du Pais ic Jonnwontagrave dautres lenvie den connoicirctre la veriteacute en faifant le mecircme bullvoyagt Rien nell donc fi necefiaire au Public que limprcllion decotPuvrage A Paris cc-t-Oumlftubre 171raquo

BESNIER

APPROBATION D pound M lAbbeacute R A C U I T

J AY lu par lordre de Monfeigneur le Chancelier tus Htmairis des vwveau

yttatfsmxlflu dfMmciyticpaumlitcP Labraquot de lOrdre de s Dominique amp icircK mont pashyru dignes de la curioliteacute du Public faiumlcraquo Parisleprenner Septembre I7M

RAG0ET

IRiriLZGE DV SOT-

LOUIS par la grace de Dieu Roi de fiance Se deftl3iumlarre A nos araez laquoSe

bullftaux-fjonfeillers les GenstenansnosCourt 4ePatlemens Maicirctres des Requeftes orshydinaires denoftre^egravete) Grand Confeil Preacutevoit de Paris Baillifs Seacuteneacutechaux leuis Lieuienans Civils amp autres noslu-fticitrs quil appartiendra SALUT Noftre bien ar-neacute le V ]ean - Baptifte Labat Mit-(ionnaire de lprdre des pF Precirccheurs J ous ayant fait remontrer quil fouhaito

bullroicirct faire imprimer un Ouvrage de faccedilons-laquo pofition qui a pour titre Meacutemoires fniu tux Ifles Frmfoifis delAtiteriyie 8c quil deacutefirent donner au Public sil nous plaifoic lui accorder nos Lettres dePriviiegetur ce neceflaires $ A e i s C A U S J S voulant favorablement traiter lExpofant Nous lui avons permis amppcrmettonsparcesPrefen-ces de faire imprimer lefdits Meacutemoires ci-deffiis expliquez en eels volumes forme marge carafteres conjointement ou fe-pareacutement 8e autant de fois que bon lui bullfemblera amp de les faire Ycndre amp deacutebiter bullpar tout noftre Royaume pendant le tempe de neuf anneacutees confegravecutivts gt agrave compter du jnur de la date defdites Preientcs Faifons d-eacutefenfes agrave toutes fortes de perfonnnes de quelque qualiteacute 8e condition quelles foient den introduiredimprcffion eacutetrangegravere dans aucun lieu de noftre Obeacuteiumlffance comme aulfi agrave tons Libraires amp Imprimeurs te autres dimprimer faire imprimer ven dre faire vendre deacutebiter ni contrefaire Jefdits Meacutemoires ci-deflus fpecifiez enroue ni en partie ni den faire aucuns Extraitsraquo fous quelque preacutetexte que ce fo i t daushygmentation correction changement de titre ou autrement fans la per million e i -preiicirc amp par eacutecrit dudit Expofant ougrave de ceux qui auront droit de lui gt agrave peine de on6fcation des Exemplaires contrefaits de quinze cent livres damende contre chacun des contrevenans dontuntiersagrave Mous un tiers agrave-lHocirctel-Dieu de Paris lautre tiers audit Expofant Btdetousdeacute-ccedilensj dommages amp intereRsicirc agrave lacharge jugeacutees Precirctacirctes feront enregiftreacuteeraquo tow

iulong fur leRcgiftredc la CommtmnutJ des Libraires amp Imprimeurs de Paris amp ce dans trois mois de la date dicelles s que JImpreffion defdits Meacutemoires fera faitelaquo dans noftre Royaume Se non ailleurs en bon papier amp en beaux caafteresconfor-mementauxReglemensdelaLibrairie s 8e quavant que de les expofer en vente le Manufcrit ou imprimeacute qui -iura fersri de copie agrave rimprcucircicircon defdics Meacutemoires feshyront renais dans le mecircme eacutetat ougraveTAppro-pation y aura efteacute donneacutee es mains de noftre tregraves-cher ampfeacuteal Chevalier amp Garde des Sceaux de France le Sieur de Voyerde Paulmy Marquis dArccedilenfon raquo Grand-Cfoix Chancelier Se Gardedes Sceaux de noftre Ordre Militaire de Saint Louis5E quil en-fera enfuite remis deux Exemplaishyres dans noftre Bibliothegraveque publique un dans celle de noftre Chafteau du Louvre te (in dans celle de noftre tregraves-cher amp ft-al Cheshyvalier Garde des Sceaux de France Graud-Ccedilroix Chancelier amp Garda des Sceaux de floftre Ordre Militaire de Saint Loiiis le Sieur de Voyer de Pau)my MarquisdAr-genfon le tout agrave peine de nulliteacute des Pre-fehtccedillaquo Du contenu defquellcs vous man dons te enjoignons de faire jouir ledit Ex-pofant ou fes ayant caufe pleinement amp pailifclemenr fans louftrirquil leur foit faic pucun trouble ou empecircchement- Voulons que la copie defdites Prefcntes qui Gera imprimeacutees tout au long au commencement pu agrave la fin defdits Meacutemoires foit tenue pour ducircement lignifieacutee amp quaux copies colla-raquoionneacutees par lun de nos feacuteaux Confeillerraquo Secretaires foi foit ajouteacutee comme raquo

1oriccedilinal Commandons au premier norrrecirc IHuiflier ou Sergent de faire pour lcxecutioB dicelles tous Agraveeacutetes requis _amp neceOaires fans demander autre permiflton amp nonobshystant clameur de Haro Charte Normande ampLettresagravececontraire C A R T pound L s s t J i o i n i P L A I S I R Donneacute agrave Pans le vingt- fixieacuteme jour du mois de Janvier lan degrace mille (ept cent vingt 8c de noftre JRegne le cinquiegraveme

Par le Roi en fon Confeil DE S H I L A I R E

11 eft ordonneacute par-Edit du Roi du moilaquo 4Aciult 1ampS-6 amp Arreft de fon -Confeil que les Livrss dont limprerfion le permet (par-Privilege 4- Sa Ma)efteacute ne pourront ltollrc vendus que par un Libraireou Impri-

jRegiflrifurle RcgiflreIV ithltCoraquotmmltmii bull des Libraires amp Imfimiiin de PJiis fag JJ7 il jneacute anformen 11 aux Keglemou amplte-famiatnti VAncfi du Coneildul Aonszlig IJpS Jiiumljuisle iumleacutevricriio

tan amp place- Pair agrave Paris ce M Marraquo ifraquoraquo- t I B L A B AT - rflaquo lCcedilire An

FB Precirccheurs-

bull XegifleszligrleKegiftre W feUcmmmattt iesUraires amp imprimeurs il tint pg Jraquof-conformeacutement MX Keglemem amp raquolaquolaquoraquoraquobull l-Jrrefl iraquo Ccnfiil diUJ Mraquoszlig I7degicirc P inj Maiilgt

Lerdits Sieurs Cavelier fils amp GifacircrtonC fait part pour chacun un quart a Mrs GmW laume Cavelier pegravere teTJieodoie-k QtMr

DE LArjLNE Syndic

Te corsfeffe avoir -ceacutedeacute agrave Mrs Girrart 8 t Cavelier fils Marchand Libraires agrave Paris laquolion prefent Privilege pour en jouir par uiK Se ayant caufe pour toujours en mon

licj

of natural history and he especially praised its style A third censor

a theologian simply attested that the book was a good read He

could not put it down because it inspired in the reader that sweet

but avid curiosity that makes us want to continue further Is this

the language you expect from a censors To quote the question that

Erving GofFman sets as the starting point of all sociological investishy

gation What is going on herel

The beginning of an answer can be found in the privilege itself

which is printed after the approbations It takes the form of a letter

from the king to the officials of his courts notifying them that as

a grace the king has granted the author of the book the exclusive

right to reproduce it The privilege is a long and complex text full

of stipulations about the physical qualities of the book It was to be

printed on good paper and in beautiful type in conformity with

the regulations on the book trade Those regulations set detailed

standards of quality control the paper was to be made from a cershy

tain grade of rags the type was to be calibrated so that one m

would be precisely as wide as three ls It was pure Colbertism

originally devised under the direction of Colbert himself And the

privilege ended like all royal edicts For such is our pleasure Leshy

gally the book existed by virtue of the kings pleasure it was a

product of the royal grace The word grace recurs in all the key

edicts on the book trade and in fact the Direction de la librairie or

bureaucracy in charge of the trade was divided into two parts the

librairie contentieuse (for regulating conflicts) and the librairie

gracieuse ( for what we today would call copyright ) Finally after

the text of the privilege came a series of paragraphs stating that

the privilege had been entered in the registers of the booksellers

8

guild and that ft had been divided into portions which had been

sold to four different booksellers

Now to the modern eye all this looks rather strange we have

censors praising the style and readability of the book instead of

cutting out its heresies we have the king conferring his grace

upon it and we have the members of the booksellers guild dividshy

ing up that grace and selling it as if it were a form of property

What indeed was going on i

One way to make sense of it is to think of the eighteenth

century book as something comparable to the jars of jam and

boxes of biscuits in England that seem so curious to Americans

because they exist by special appointment to her Majesty the

Queen The book was a quality product it had a royal sanction

and in dispensing that sanction the censors vouched for its genshy

eral excellence Censorship was not simply a matter of purging

heresies It was positive mdash a royal endorsement of the book and an

officiai invitation to read it

The governing term in this system was privilege (etymol-

ogically private law) In fact privilege was the organizing prinshy

ciple of the Old Regime in general not only in France but

throughout most of Europe Law did not fall equally on everyone

it was a special dispensation accorded to particular individuals or

groups by tradition and the grace of the king In the publishing

industry privilege operated at three levels the book itself was prishy

vileged (the modern idea of copyright did not yet exist) the

bookseller was privileged (as a member of a guild he enjoyed the

exclusive right to engage in the book trade) and the guild was

privileged (as a corporation it enjoyed certain exclusive rights

9

notably exemption from taxation) In short the Bourbon monshy

archy developed an elaborate system for channeling the power of

the printed word and as a product ofthat system the book epitoshy

mized the entire regime

Such were the formal characteristics of the typographical Old

Regime How does the system look if one studies its operation beshy

hind the facades of title pages and privileges i Fortunately three

large registers in the Bibliothegraveque Nationale provide a rich supshy

ply ofinformation about how censors performed their tasks in the

1750s Dozens of their letters and reports to the director of the book

trade C G de Lamoignon de Malesherbes reveal their reasons

for accepting or rejecting manuscripts The acceptances often read

like the approbations printed in the books Thus a typical recomshy

mendation for a privilege I have read by order of Monseigneur

le chancelier the Letters of M agravee la Riviegravere They seem to me well

written and full of reasonable and edifying reflections1 The reshy

jections offer a fuller view of the censors reasoning and like the

approbations they concern the quality of the work as much as its

ideological content One censor condemns the light and banteshy

ring tone of a treatise on cosmology2 Another has no theological

objections to a biography of the prophet Mohammed but finds it

superficial and inadequately researched3 A third refuses a matheshy

matical textbook because it does not work through problems in

sufficient detail and fails to give the cubes as well as the squares of

certain sums An account of the campaigns of Frederick II offends

a fourth censor not because of any disrespectful discussion of

French foreign policy but rather because It is a compilation witshy

hout taste and without discernement5 And a fifth rejects a defen-

10

se of religious orthodoxy against the attacks of free-thinkers prishy

marily on esthetic grounds

It is not a book at all You cannot tell what the authors purpose is until you have finished it He advances in one direction then doubles back his arguments are often weak and superficial his style in an attempt to be lively merely becomes petulant In the effort to turn a pretty phrase he frequently looks silly and ridiculous6

Of course the reports also contain plenty of comments conshy

demning unorthodox ideas The censors certainly defended the

Church and king But they worked from the assumption that an

approbation was a positive endorsement of a work and that a

privilege conveyed the sanction of the crown They wrote as men

of letters themselves concerned to defend the honor of French

literature as one of them put it7 So they often adopted a superior

tone as if they were a Boileau or a Saint Simon pouring scorn on

works that failed to measure up to standards set in the Grand

Siegravecle The subject is frivolous and this basic flaw is not offset by

any fine detail explained a censor in rejecting the manuscript of a

novel I find only insipid moralizing interspersed with ordinary

adventures vapid bantering colorless descriptions and trivial reshy

flections Such a work is not worthy of appearing with a public

mark of approbation8

This style of censorship created a problem if manuscripts had

to be not merely inoffensive but also worthy of a Louisquatorzean

stamp of approval would not most literature fail to qualify i The

censor of the above-mentioned novel chose a conventional way

around this difficulty

i i

Because [this work] despite its faults and mediocrity contains nothing dangerous nor reprehensible and does not after all atshytack religion morality or the state I think that there is no risk in tolerating its printing and that it can be published with a tacit permission although the public will hardly be flattered by a present of this sort9

In short the regime created loopholes in the legal system Tacit

permissions simple permissions tolerances permissions of

the police mdash the ministers in charge of the book trade devised a

whole series of categories which could be used to permit books to

appear without receiving an official endorsement Given the nashy

ture of the privilege system they could not do otherwise unless

they wanted to declare war on most of contemporary literature

As Malesherbes put it in reflecting on his years as director of the

book trade A man who read only books that originally appeared

with the explicit sanction of the government as the law preshy

scribes would be behind his contemporaries by nearly a censhy

tury10 Malesherbes even turned a blind eye to many of the blashy

tantly illegal works that were printed outside the kingdom and

that circulated inside through clandestine channels Thanks to

this sort of flexibility the system accomodated itself to change and

the Enlightenment was possible

Exactly how the Enlightenment penetrated the cracks in the

system and spread through French society is a long and complex

story Without recounting it in detail I would like to make one

point it was not simply a story that pitted liberty against oppresshy

sion but rather one of complicity and collaboration From the beshy

ginning of preventive censorship in 1642 the number of censors

12

kept increasing There were about 10 in 166060 in 1700120 in 1760

and 180 in 1789 By 1770 they processed about 1000 manuscripts a

year and their refusal rate was low 10 to 30 per cent of the bullworks

submitted (But of course anyone with a truly dangerous work

did not attempt to get it through the censorship and went directly

to the underground publishers)

The systems flexibility and laxity was due not merely to its

loopholes and escape clauses but to a growing complicity between

censors and authors They came from the same milieu Indeed

most censors were authors themselves mdash e g Fontenelle Creacutebil-

lon (both father and son) Piron Condillac and Suard Far from

being bureaucrats they did not even receive a salary and generally

supported themselves by working as professors tutors librarians

and secretaries They often knew the authors whose texts they

censored and the authors often managed to get censored by their

friends Voltaire sent his requests for censors directly to the Keeshy

per of the Seals and the head of the police Malesherbes the direcshy

tor of the book trade gave Rousseaus Letter to dAlembert

to dAlembert himself for approval Malesherbes also arranged for

an underground French edition of Rousseaus Emile going so far

as to approve provisions in the contract and he virtually acted as

Rousseaus agent in the publication oicircLa Nouvelle Heacuteloiumlse Piquet

the censor for La Nouvelle Heacuteloiumlse required only 23 changes in the

text most of them quite minor Only two concerned serious hereshy

sies and Malesherbes turned a blind eye to an unexpurgated text

that was imported from Amsterdam In fact the greatest threat to

the Enlightenment came from the Church not the state Bowing

to religious pressures Malesherbes had the privilege for the Ency-

l3

clopeacutedie revoked but he saved the book by secretly protecting Dishy

derot and the publishers12

The growing leniency produced scandals Best known bullwere

the censors endorsement of a translation of the Koran as a work

that contained nothing contrary to the Christian religion1 and

the affaire of De lEsprit an anti-Christian metaphysical treatise

by Helveacutetius Helveacutetius used his contacts in Versailles to get a

sympathetic censor Jean-Pierre Tercier the first secretary in the

foreign ministry and a minor man of letters who did some censhy

soring on the side but knew nothing about metaphysics Tercier

received the pages of the manuscript in small batches and out

of order so he could not follow the argument At a dinner

party Mme Helveacutetius a great beauty turned her full charm on

him and persuaded him to hurry things up so that her husband

could give the manuscript to the printer before they left for a

holiday in their country estate When it came to approving the

proofs Tercier whose main concern was Frances foreign policy at

the height of the Seven Years War initialed all the sheets at once

without really reading them Then as soon as the book appeared

the enemies of the philosophes produced a tremendous outcry

here was bold-faced atheism appearing with a royal privilege

The book was condemned and burned by the parlement of

Paris Helveacutetius had to disown it Tercier was fired And the text

reappeared as a best-seller in the underground trade4

It would be possible to produce enough anecdotes of this kind

to suggest that the administrators of the Old Regime allowed a de

facto liberty of the press But one can also cite enough horror stoshy

ries to prove the opposite booksellers were branded and sent to

H

the galleys lives were ruined in the Bastille The Bastille was no

torture house but it was not a three star hotel either as some

historians believe About 1000 persons connected with the book

trade bullwere imprisoned there between 1659 and 1789 and about 300

of them were writers Voltaire was sent there twice for a total of

eleven months As a consequence he spent most of his life in exile

After being shut up in the dungeon of Vincennes Diderot abanshy

doned the idea of publishing some of his most important works

such as Rameaus Nephew The Bastille was more than a symbol It

was a powerful deterrent and it contributed to a variety of self-

censorship that was all the more insidious for being internalized

I would conclude with a contradiction The Old Regime in

France was both humane and brutal When the king first discovshy

ered that the invention of movable type could shake his throne he

tried to solve the problem by decreeing in an edict of 1535 that

anyone who printed a book would be hanged That did not work

nor did an edict of 1757 that threatened to punish any author of irshy

religious or seditious works with death The system remained reshy

lentlessly repressive in principle In practice it became increasshy

ingly flexible thanks to enlightened administrators who bent the

rules and by doing so created enough room in an archaic strucshy

ture to accommodate a great deal of modern literature mdash at least

until it all came crashing down in 1789

bull E T u s N O W leap over two centuries and consider East Ger-

I many (The GDR) in 1989 A glimpse at the title page

I of another typical publication Dichtungen und Frag-

I mente a collection of essays by Novalis makes it clear

J L M ^ H that we are dealing with a different literary system

which did not make open statements about the exercise of censhy

sorship In fact censorship was forbidden by the constitution of

the GDR So to see how it functioned one must go behind the

facades of books and constitutions and interrogate the people who

made the system work

Fortunately those people remained at their posts in a state of

suspended administration for a few months between the fall of

the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two Germanies

Thanks to an introduction from a friend in a Leipzig publishing

house I got to know two of them Hans-Juumlrgen Wesener and

Christina Horn and they were willing to talk In fact they gave

me a tour of their office at 90 Clara-Zetkin Straszlige just two blocks

east of the Wall and they explained the way it operated To hear a

censors account of censorship was a rare opportunity so I would

like to discuss it in some detail and then in the end try to see

whether it yields analogies to the French case

The censors did not care for the term censorship It sounded

too negative Frau Horn explained Their office was actually

called the Head Administration for Publishing and the Book

Trade and their principal concern as they defined it was to

make literature happen mdash that is to oversee the process by which

ideas became books and books reached readers In the early 1960s

Frau Horn and Herr Wesener had graduated from the Humboldt

16

THE CONTROL MECHANISM FOR LITERATURE IN THE GDR

O Erich Honecker

GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE PARTY

SECRETARIATS OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

CULTURE Ursula Ragwitz

DIVISIONS

SECTORS GDR

CULTURAL HERITAGE

CHILDRENS LITERATURE

ART AND MUSIC

FOREIGN LITERATURE

GDR LITERATURE

CENSORS

University with advanced degrees in German literature They

took jobs in the Ministry of Culture and soon afterwards were asshy

signed to the Publishing and Book Trade Division where they

rose through the ranks in the sectors of GDR and foreign liteshy

rature

It took some time for me to get a clear picture of the bureaushy

cracys organization because at first I saw only corridors and

closed doors all of them the same mdash plain brown with nothing but

a number on the outside East German fiction was number 215

forty doors down a mustard-yellow hallway on the second floor

of a building that seemed to go on forever twisting and winding

around a central courtyard In fact the bureaucracy was ordered

in hierarchical segments sectors divisions administrations and

ministries located under the government or Council of Minisshy

tries And the whole structure was subordinated to the Commushy

nist Party which had a hierarchy of its own divisions led to

secretariats of the Central Committee and ultimately to the Politshy

buumlro under Erich Honecker the supreme power in the GDR15

How all this functioned would be explained to me shortly

When I first arrived Frau Horn and Herr Wesener seemed eager

to demonstrate that they were university people like myself not

faceless bureaucrats and certainly not Stalinists The top people in

the office sometimes came from outside the bureaucracy they exshy

plained A division chief might have been the director of a pubshy

lishing house the editor of a journal or an official in the Authors

League Literature was an interlocking system that spanned many

institutions and people in literary circles often intersected They

themselves might eventually make lateral transfers into journals

18

or publishing firms because all were run by the Communist Parshy

ty and they had always been loyal party members

Of course loyalty had its limits Both Herr Wesener and Frau

Horn had joined the massive demonstration of November 41989

which had precipitated the collapse of the Politburo and the openshy

ing of the Wall They identified with the reformers inside the

party and even with dissident authors like Christoph Hein and

Volker Braun whose works they had helped to censor They fashy

vored socialism with a human face the third way between

the Soviet and the American systems And they regretted the fall of

the Wall

I realized that a great deal of self-justification went into this

self-description No one wanted to appear as an apparatchik in

June 1990 when we had our conversation But why did they deshy

fend the Wall ( Herr Wesener surprised me with his answer The

Wall had helped to make the GDR a Leseland a country of readshy

ers he explained It had kept out the corruption of consumer culshy

ture Once breached it could not withstand the schlock mdash the sex

books exercise manuals and sleazy romances mdash that was sure to

flood the GDR Schlock came from the West it was the main proshy

duct of the literary system on the other side of the Wall for we

too had censorship it was exerted through the pressure of the

market

Feeling somewhat cornered I then asked what exactly was

censorship as he had practiced it i Herr Wesener answered with a

single word Planning In a socialist system he explained litshy

erature was planned like everything else and to demonstrate the

point he handed me a remarkable document entitled Subject

l9

T h e m e n p l a n 1 9 9 0

Literatur der DDR

I g e t t e W e r k e

Irmgard A b e Eulenspiegel Verlag Oben links wo die Schuumlrze winkt 15 000

Geschichten cellPapp In diesem neuen Geschichtenbuch der Autorin begegnet der Leser alten Bekannten wieder wie Herrn und Frau Weise Walter und allen jenen deren Lebensgluumlck durch Miszligverstaumlndnisse verhindert oder gefoumlrdert wird

Sonja A n d e r s Buchverlag Der Morgen Zwischen Himmel und Houmllle (AT) 15 000

Lebensbericht

Sonja Anders 32 Jahre alt verheiratet Mutter von zwei Kindern wird mit schweren Entzugserscheinungen in eine psychiatrische Klinik eingeliefert Doch die diagnostizierte Alkohol- und Tablettenabshyhaumlngigkeit ist nur ein Symptom ist Ausdruck einer Beziehungsstoumlshyrung 2i sich selbst zu ihrer Mutter zu anderen Menschen zum Leben

Gunter A n t r a k Das Neue Berlin Zwei Moumlrder (AT) 100 000

Krimi DIE-Reihe Ein Mord ist geschehen Die Fahndung der K hat schnell Erfolg Der Moumlrder gesteht Da meldet sich ein alter Mann und behauptet er sei der Moumlrder Oberleutnant Dirksen und seinem Team scheint es unmoumlgshylich nur einem der beiden die Tat zu beweisen Heben der Erraitt-lungshandlung werden Hintergruumlnde fuumlr Fehlverhalten deutlich gemacht

Ingeborg A r 1 t Aufbau-Verlag Um der Liebe willen 15 OOO Jn dem sorgfaumlltig recherchierten zweiten Buch der Autorin dessen Handluuumlg im Dreiszligigjaumlhrigen Krieg spielt ist die Historie nicht Zierrat sondern Fundament um das Wesentliche - wie Menschen mitshyeinander umgehen - zu begreifen

Edmund A u e MilitaumlrverlsK Reise zum Dalmatinischen Archipel 10 000

Tagebuch-Erz n n v trade J e l f V Ucirc d lf Adriakuumlste um das Grab seines Vaters zu suchen III ^t f W lv d e r i t d e r Vergangenheit konfrontiert hat Begegnunshygen mit Menschen die seinen Vater gekannt haben erfaumlhrt daszlig dieser als Partisan an der Seite jugoslawischer Genossen gekaumlmnft hat

Abtlaquo Bellatriatik Kunst-und Musikliteratur Berlin den 30laquo lie i 1968

V e r t r a u l i c h

Themenplaneinsohaumltzung 1989

Literatur der DDR

Auf der Grundlage der Orientierungen 4ea XI Parteitages sowie in Auswertung der 3eratungsergebnisse des JC Sohriftstellerkon-greases der DDR ist die Zusammenarbeit von Autoren und Verlagen auf neue literarische Werke geriohtet die zur Verstaumlndigung uumlber Hauptfragen gegenwaumlrtigen Lebens beitragen die fur die Staumlrkung des Sozialismus und die Sloberung das Friedens wirken

Mit eisern Planangebot von 625 -Titeln in 11508950 Expl (255 SA 4991100 Expli 370 HA 6617850 Expl) werden von den Vorlagen alle Moumlglichkeiten ftir die Herausgabe von DDR-Literttur wahrgenommen

Plan 1988 559 Titel in 10444000 3xpl 203 EA 4460000 Expl 356 HA 5984000 3xpl

Des Planangebot fuumlr 1989 wird bestimmt durota Titel die anlaumlszliglich des 40 Jahrestages der Gruumlndung der DDR Gesohichte und Gegenwart dea ersten sozialistischen deutschen Staates In vielfaumlltigen liteshyrarischen Formen widerspiegeln Daran sind eine Reibe namhafter Autoren beteiligt Zugleich ist wie bereits im Vorjahr festzustelshylen daszlig immer mehr Autoren der mittleren und juumlngeren Sohriftstel-lergeneration das Planangebot bestimmen und einen wesentlichen Beishytrag zur Ljteratur der DDR leisten

Unter thematischen und literarischen ugraveesichtspunkten werden Erwarshytungen gesetzt insbesondere in folgende Vorhaben

Plan 1990 Literature of the GDR It was a 78 page overview of all

the fiction scheduled to be published in 1990 a literary year that

never happened

As Herr Wesener let me keep the copy of the plan I later studshy

ied it in detail To my surprise I found it flat and business-like in

tone It listed all the projected books alphabetically according to

the last names of their authors Each entry contained the title of

the work the publisher proposed press run in some cases the genshy

re or series in which it would appear and a short description of its

contents

After reading the descriptions I wondered whether East Gershy

man literature might have contained more schlock than Herr

Wesener admitted The years output of 202 new tides (in fiction

and belles-lettres not counting new editions) was to include a great

many love stories detective thrillers historical romances war noshy

vels westerns and science fiction adventures (called utopian

novels in the lingo of the censors ) Of course one cannot assess their

literary qualities without reading them and that is impossible beshy

cause most of them were scrapped along with the censorship as

soon as the year began But the one-paragraph blurbs accompanyshy

ing each tide in the plan suggest something like socialist kitsch

Thus The Burden of Closeness by Erika Paschke

While Ina Scheldt travels from country to country pursuing her demanding career as a translator her mother and her sevshyenteen-year-old daughter Marja become increasingly upset at having to keep the household going by themselves One day Ina brings a man home with her and complications develop in the three-way relationships of the family The man recognizes

22

Inas excessive concern with external values and turns away from her In this as in her other novellas the author is concerned with ethical questions of domestic life She sets off notions of human worth and mutual respect against the lack of undershystanding for others

This sounds surprisingly soap operatic and certainly far remoshy

ved from socialist realism or the stern stuff that one would exshy

pect from the so-called land of workers and pea-sants But

East Germany was also known as a Nischengesellschaft a soshy

ciety in which people withdrew into private life so novels that

moralized about personal relationships may have seemed

appropriate to the literary planners especially if they warned

readers against travel mdash that is against exposure to the blandishshy

ments of the West

While the plan was being prepared thousands of East Gershy

mans -were escaping to West Germany and the entire GDR spent

most of its evenings watching West German television Perhaps

then it was no coincidence that several of the projected novels set

family dramas within the context of relations between the two

German states Wolfgang Kroebers Somewhere in Europe was to

confront a current problem why people leave their country i

I Hear a Way by Rita Kuczynski was to tell the story of Suschen

and her family in both halves of a divided Berlin Kurt Nowaks

Signs of Separation was to trace a family history on both sides

of the GermanmdashGerman border And The Late Mail by Lothar

Guenther was to show how a young worker made a heroic choice

between a draft notice and an invitation to join his father in the

West which arrived in the same mail delivery

23

DICHTUNGEN UND FRAGMENTE

1989

Verlag Philipp Redarn jun Leipzig

Although it does not contain much strident propaganda the

plan adheres relentlessly to political correctness East German

style When lovers kiss and make up they pay tribute to the deepshy

er quality of personal relationships in a system free from the sushy

perficialities of consumerism When Indians fight off invaders in

the Dakotas or Amazonia they strike blows against imperialism

Fighting itself remains resolutely anti-fascistic even in science

fiction The Threat by Arne Sjoeberg was to recount the overthrow

of a Fuumlhrer who had seized power in the planet Palmyra by mashy

nufacturing a false alarm about an impending catastrophe And

detective stories served as vehicles for exposing the pathology of

capitalist societies Thus The Whispering of a Dress by Wolfgang

Kohrt would explore the whole range of criminality in America

in order to lay bare the emptiness of relations between the sexes

the outrages of daily life the desire for revenge the lust for money

speculation on inheritances and unfulfilled longings

All these stories had a further subtext or rather another text

altogether a Themenplaneinschaumltzung or ideological report

that went with the plan to the Central Committee of the Commushy

nist Party This document was as remarkable as the plan itself so

I was especially grateful to receive a copy marked confidential

from Herr Wesener It had been approved by the Central Comshy

mittee in mid-1988 and covered the plan for 1989 the last literary

year of the East German old regime In it one can see the censors

making their case for the coming crop of books to the bosses of the

communist party and one can hear the unmistakable accent of

the state bureaucracy Socialism is advancing everywhere everytshy

hing is pointing onward and upward production is expanding

25

625 titles were scheduled to be published a total of 11508950

copies representing a significant advance on the previous plan

(559 titles totaling 10444000 copies)

1989 was to be a year of celebration for forty glorious years of

socialist rule in East Germany Therefore the literature of 1989

would be dedicated above all to the past and present of the GDR as

they had been defined by Comrade Erich Honecker Our party

and our people stand in a revolutionary and humanistic tradition

of centuries of struggle for social progress liberty and the rights

and value of mankind Then in language loaded down with

similar pieties of GDR-speak the report surveyed the main

themes of the plan Thus for example it stressed that the years

output of historical novels would express energetic anti-

Fascism while novels set in the present would conform to the

principle of socialist realism and would promote the historical

mission of the working class in the struggle for social progress

The authors of the plan confessed that they had failed to produce

an adequate supply of stories about factory workers and tractor

drivers but they would compensate by publishing anthologies of

older proletarian literature Aside from this deficiency everyshy

thing was good and getting better The report did not mention the

slightest indication of dissension On the contrary it indicated

that authors publishers and officials all had their shoulder to the

wheel pushing literature to new heights at the very moment

when the whole system was to come crashing down

It seems strange to read this testimony about ideological purity

and institutional health from the inner workings of a regime that

was about to crash Was all this paper work merely an apparatchik

26

fantasy something that filled the in and out boxes of the bushy

reaucracy but had little to do with the actual experience of litshy

erature among ordinary East Germans i

Herr Wesener and Frau Horn assured me that the plan really

did determine the production and consumption of books in the

GDR They then described every stage in the system a long comshy

plicated process which involved negotiating proposals for books

with authors editors and a special committee of representatives

from book stores libraries the academic world and the Authors

League Two stages in that process were critical for the fate of a

book the first occurred when the censors submitted their plan to

the ideologists keeping watch over them from the Central Comshy

mittee of the Communist Party the second when the censors fishy

nally received a finished text and went over it with a blue pencil

As Herr Wesener and Frau Horn described it the first hurdle

was the worst They cast themselves as friends of literature as the

crucial middlemen who brought books into being by incorporashy

ting them into a plan that would get by the philistines in the Censhy

tral Committee fifteen hard-bitten ideologues in the Comshy

mittees Culture Division working under a dragon lady named

Ursula Ragwitz Every year the censors boss Klaus Houmlpcke

would march over to Culture with their plan under his arm and

do battle with Frau Ragwitz When he returned he could only

say what Culture had allowed and what it had rejected There

were no explanations no refusals in writing Then Herr Wesener

had to relay the refusals to the heads of the publishing houses

who would pass them on to the authors and he could say nothing

more than it was a fiat from above Das ist so

27

Still there were ways around the philistines in Culture Had

I not noticed all the empty slots in the plan for 1990 i There were 41

of them following the 202 entries for new works of fiction

Houmlpckes people could fill those slots with relatively hot books

Of course they had to get permission from Culture but that came

more easily on an ad hoc basis than in a formal meeting when Frau

Ragwitzs group tried to outdo one another in demonstrating

their militancy Also had I noticed that the plan contained more

entries for reprints (315) than for new editions (202)^ That was

where they put the hottest items mdash books by East German autshy

hors that had appeared in West Germany caused some fuss (but

not for the censorship office) and could be published (as inconspishy

cuously as possible and usually in small press runs) in the GDR

once things had quieted down

Provided they kept their criticism implicit and wrapped in a

protective cover of irony Houmlpcke was willing to let a few books of

this sort seep through the bureaucracy and into the body politic

He took so many chances in fact that he became something of a

hero not only to his subordinates in the censorship office whom

he always protected but also to some of the publishers and writers

whom I met in East Germany They described him as a hard-

boiled hard-line journalist who took over the Administration of

Publishing and the Book Trade in 1973 with the worst possible

ideas about imposing order on intellectual life But the more time

he spent battling the Party bureaucracy the more sympathy he

developed for independent-minded authors By the 1980s he had

become an expert at slipping unorthodox books past the Central

Committee Two of them Die neue Herrlichkeit by Guumlnter de

28

Bruyn and Hinze-Kunze Roman by Volker Braun caused such a

scandal within the party that they nearly cost him his job Someshy

one within the Central Committee denounced the Hinze-Kunze

Roman in particular as an intellectual bomb Houmlpcke was called

on the carpet and given a formal censure He managed nonetheshy

less to hold on to his position by taking the blame and bending

with the wind And a few years later at a meeting of the East Gershy

man PEN organization in February 1989 he supported a resolushy

tion condemning the arrest of Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia

The second crucial step in the process of censorship took place

after the plan had been approved and the books written At that

point a text would arrive in the office of Frau Horn and Herr

Wesener and they had to go over every word in it They insisted

that they wielded their blue pencils lightly because most of the

effective censorship had already occurred mdash in the planning proshy

cess and in the authors heads Frau Horn said that she and the five

censors working under her typically rejected only about seven of

the 200mdash250 -works in GDR fiction that they vetted every year

She had learned to identify certain allergies of the Central

Committee members so she always struck out words that might

touch off a hostile reaction mdash for example ecology (a taboo

noun it was associated with the massive state-produced pollushy

tion in the GDR) and critical (a taboo adjective it evoked dissishy

dents who were to be buried in silence) References to Stalinism

were so inimical that she would change opponent of Stalinism

to contradictor of his time and she even replaced the 1930s

with a safer vaguer expression the first half of the twentieth

century A decade ago everything concerning the United States

29

was sensitive They had great difficulty in getting a translation of

The Catcher in the Rye past Kurt Hager the chief of ideology in the

Central Committee because Hager considered Holden Caulfield

a bad role model for our GDR youth But after Gorbachevs adshy

vent in 1985 the Soviet Union became the most delicate subject in

Frau Horns office and the censors had to be especially wary of

anything identified with SU Lit as Soviet writing was known

in their in-house jargon

Once a text had cleared this final hurdle it received a Printing

Authorization Herr Wesener showed me one a small slip of pashy

per with his signature on it and a formulaic injunction to the prinshy

ter to do the job It looked unimpressive until Herr Wesener exshy

plained that no printer would take on a job unless the copy came

with such a slip of paper and that most of the printing presses in

the country belonged to the Communist Party

Even then things could go wrong My acquaintances among

East German editors had a whole repertory of stories about

changes made by over-zealous proof readers and mischievous

compositors One concerned a nature poem that had a line about a

group of young birds

Their heads nest-wards turned (Die Koumlpfe nestwaumlrts gewandt)

By mistake or design the compositor changed nest-wards to

west-wards^ and the proof-reader smelling heresy covered

himself by making it east-wards

Eventually the books reached readers but not in the same fashshy

ion as in the West The printers shipped the bound copies to a

30

single storage facility in Leipzig which serviced the entire counshy

try They often sat in crates for months before they made it into

stores and their distribution did not correspond to demand beshy

cause there was no real literary market no mechanism through

which demand could make itself felt Advertising did not exist

and there was little reviewing mdash usually nothing more than one

page every two weeks in the party newspaper Neues Deutschland

or a notice in the literary magazine Sinn und Form Books were

simply shipped to stores where people stopped by to see what was

on the shelves They often took baskets at the door and filled them

with whatever struck their fancy I frequently saw them lined up

before the cashier reading from their baskets the way Americans

in supermarkets nibble from the food in their shopping carts East

Germany really was a reading land I thought But how did

readers read i

Reading is a mystery everywhere Psychologists sociologists

and philosophers do not understand it when it takes place before

their eyes and historians have had a devilish time in sorting out its

past If I may return once more to eighteenth-century France

I must admit that we cannot get inside the heads of readers alshy

though we have gathered a great deal ofinformation about the cirshy

cumstances that surround them Most research has concentrated

on texts using notions of the implied reader horizons of expectashy

tion and rhetorical and typographical strategies

The literature of the Enlightenment was notorious for develshy

oping hidden complicities between writers and readers and they

often served as ways of circumventing censorship Montesquieu

put social criticism in the mouths of his falsely naive Persians

31

Voltaire projected heresies onto exotic settings mdash China India

Eldorado distant planets mdash that had an uncanny resemblance to

France And Diderot taught readers to find meaning between the

lines or even in the cross references of his Encyclopeacutedie Thus the

reference at the end of the article CANNIBALISM in volume I

See E U C A R I S T A n d at the end of EUCARIST See C A N N I shy

B A L I S M

Did anything of this sort exist in East Germany i There at least

the historian could interview readers from the old regime while

their memories were fresh In June 19901 was invited to lecture on

forbidden books in eighteenth-century France to the Pierckhei-

mer Gesellschaft a group of book collectors in Magdeburg After

the lecture my hosts mdash mostly doctors lawyers and teachers mdash

engaged in a lively discussion about the forbidden books of the

GDR and how they had read them

In the 1950s and early 1960s they explained it was dangerous to

own works by authors like Freud and Nietzsche But such books

circulated through networks of trusted friends A friend would

appear with a volume and give you a time limit often two days to

read it You bullwould shut yourself up in a safe place and pore over

the text day and night The effect was overwhelming It cut into

you like a knife said one of my hosts By 1970 things had begun to

ease Coded want ads for the books appeared in the press and tatshy

tered copies of them could be procured in certain cafeacutes Dissident

authors of the current generation mdash Stefan Heym in David Chrisshy

ta Wolf in Kassandra mdash got away with heresies by putting them in

foreign settings just as Montesquieu and Voltaire had done And

everyone learned to read between the lines

32

Instead of concentrating on content readers listened for tone

especially in poetry and they kept a sharp eye for typographical

devices such as the alignment of letters at the beginning of lines

which sometimes spelled out a defiant message when read vertishy

cally They did not read passively but scanned up and down the

text searching for gaps and irregularities that might be clues to

hidden meanings Often they compared texts to see what had

been cut or doctored and therefore was most worthy of attention

Three translations of Gorbachevs Perestroika circulated one from

the GDR one produced in the Soviet Union and one rendered

into German from an American edition The East Germans

scoured them all hoping to pick up every possible nuance of de-

stalinization at a time when they could not speak openly against

Stalin at home

They also knew all the famous missing passages of Christa

Wolfs Kassandra The West Germans had published the full text

of the book while the East Germans put out a censored version

with ellipsis dots in the place of the expurgated sections mdash presumshy

ably a concession to Christa Wolf who had enough influence to

insist on special treatment by the censors Some East Germans got

hold of a western copy extracted the offending passages and cirshy

culated them on slips of paper that could be inserted at the correct

places I was given a set of the inserts After larding them into an

East German copy of Kassandra I found that the text suddenly

came alive Here for example is a sentence that had been purged

from the top of page no

The supreme commanders of NATO and the Warsaw Pact are discussing new increases in armaments in order to be able to

33

counter their opponents presumed superiority in weapons technology with something of equal strength

To a Western eye this sentence looks surprisingly unprovocative

Even an East German might slip past it without noticing anyshy

thing suspicious But the typewritten insert highlights it in a

manner that brings out an implicit message the powers of

destruction on both sides of the Cold War are pursuing the same

policies both are bent on destroying the opponent mdash that is they

are morally equal or equally immoral

By these devices the East Germans not only read between

lines they also controlled the meanings in the blank spaces They

read critically aggressively with a combination of sophistication

and alienation unimaginable in the West even among our harshy

diest deconstructors To be sure few East Germans reached the

level of sophistication attained by the book lovers of Magdeburg

But everyone learned to look at official messages skeptically even

those who did nothing more than switch back and forth between

East and West German broadcasts on their television sets

HA V I N G W A T C H E D censorship at work unshy

der these two very different old regimes it reshy

mains to be seen whether we can arrive at any

conclusions by comparing them

_ First of course we must allow for the differshy

ences both cultural and political In eighteenth-century France

the book was the dominant medium of communication except

for word of mouth and the state was relatively weak Conditions

were the opposite in the GDR the book was weak (everyone

watched television) and the state all-powerful

But despite the single-party system the censors in the GDR

found areas of flexibility within the system As in France there

were really two systems a rigid formal one and a pliable human

one Under both old regimes the administrators of the book trade

created enough cracks in their own bureaucracy for unorthodox

books to seep into the reading public Houmlpckes vacant slots in the

yearly plan were the functional equivalent of Malesherbes tacit

permissions Some might claim that Houmlpcke himself was a modshy

ern-day Malesherbes although I suspect he remained an apparatshy

chik at heart But whatever the similarities between their leaders

both book administrations confronted a similar tendency pershy

missiveness shaded off into laxity and laxity led to scandals The

Hinze-Kunze Roman shook the East German system just as De

lEsprit rocked the French And in both cases the book adshy

ministrators rode out the shock waves in the same way mdash by bushy

reaucratic hunkering down

Of course censorship affected everyone involved with literashy

ture not just the censors It influenced the way writers wrote and

35

readers read It determined the relationship between writer and

reader and reader and text And by doing so it shaped the ways

women and men made meaning The making of meaning is a

mysterious business which historians are only beginning to unshy

derstand and which hardly can be reduced to a formula like readshy

ing between the lines But authoritarian systems may contain a

self-defeating element in their attempts to monopolize power by

controlling the means of communication they provoke counter-

reactions and foster a critical turn of mind they inadvertently

teach skepticism and thereby undermine their own legitimacy

So I do not think it adequate to orient the history of censorship

around the truism that censors share a common task of eliminashy

ting heresies Nor am I arguing that censorship should be undershy

stood as a thing-in-itself an isolated phenomenon that is always

and everywhere the same the mere antithesis to freedom of

thought My thesis is rather that censorship is an ingredient of

authoritarian political cultures and that it varies in accordance

with the system to which it belongs The historians task should

be to uncover the organizing principles of those systems and he

can do so in some cases by studying them from the inside from the

viewpoint of the censors themselves In the case of the Old Reshy

gime in France censorship expressed the basic principle of privileshy

ge in the case of the GDR it was a matter of planning

When seen from a comparative perspective therefore the hisshy

tory of censorship belongs to the history of culture and communishy

cation It has its dramatic moments its heroes and martyrs but it

generally takes place in obscure gray areas where orthodoxy shashy

ded off into heresy and rough drafts hardened into printed texts

36

Part of the history of censorship leads through the Bastille and the

goulag but most of it belongs to the critical zone of cultural conshy

tention where the censor could become a collaborator of the

author and the author an accomplice of the censor We need to

explore that zone to understand it and once we have found a way

through its underbrush we should gain a new appreciation of its

great towering monuments such as Areopagitica and the first

amendment

N O T E S

i Report by abbeacute Geinos November 241750 Bibliothegraveque Nationale ms fr 22137 fo 103

2 Report by abbeacute Foucher undated Ibid fo 90 3 Report by Deacuteguignez undated Ibid fo 135 4 Report by Le Blond October 21752 ms fr 22138 fo 38 5 Report by Delaville November 231757 Ibid fo 19 6 Report dated January 171754 ms fr 22137 fo 94 7 Report by Reacutemond de St Albine April 291751 ms fr 22138 fo 78 As an exshy

ample of an emphatically political and religious argument against granting a privilege see the report by Bonamy of December 181755 ms fr 22137 fo 23

8 Report by de Bougainville August 261751 ms fr 22138 fo 33 9 Ibid 10 C G de Lamoignon de Malesherbes Meacutemoires sur la librairie et sur la liberteacute de la

presse (Geneva 1969 reprint of a text written in 1788 and first published in 1809)

p 300 11 Among the general accounts of censorship under the Old Regime in France see

Nicole Herrmann-Mascard La Censure des livres agrave Paris agrave la fin de lAncien Reacutegime (Paris 1968) a work that is heavily derived from an older study J-P Belin Le Comshymerce des livres prohibeacutes agrave Paris de 1750 agrave iy8g (Paris 1913) See also Robert Shackleton Censure and Censorship Impediments to Free Publication in the Age of Enlightenment (Austin Texas 1975) William Hanley The Policing of Thought Censorship in Eighteenth-Century France Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century vol 183 (1980) pp 265mdash295 and Daniel Roche La Censure in Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier eds Histoire de leacutedition franccedilaise (Paris 1984) II 76mdash83

I have not been able to consult the unpublished thesis by Catherine Blangonnet Recherches sur les censeurs royaux et leur place dans la socieacuteteacute au temps de Malesher-bes (1750mdash1763) Eacutecole Nationale des Chartes 1975

12 Pierre Grosclaude Malesherbes teacutemoin et interpregravete de son temps (Paris 1961) and Grosclaude Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Malesherbes documents ineacutedits (Paris i960)

13 Louis-Seacutebastien Mercier Tableau de Paris (Amsterdam 1783) II 531 have not been able to confirm whether Merciers report of this incident was accurate

14 D Ozanam La Disgracircce dun premier commis Tercier et laffaire de De lEsprit (1758mdash1789) Bibliothegraveque de lEcole des Chartes vol 113 (1955) pp 140mdash170 and D W Smith Helveacutetius A Study in Persecution (Oxford 1965)

15 For a fuller description of the organization and functioning of the censorship office see Robert Darnton Berlin Journal 1989mdash1990 (New York 1991) chapter 8

38

Censorship in Comparative Perspective France iy8g mdash East Germany ig8g

by Robert Darnton

Adapted from H I S T O R I C A L C H A N G E A N D H U M A N R I G H T S The Oxford Amnesty-

Lectures 1994 Olwen Hufton (Editor) published by Basic Books in December 1994 and distribushy

ted by HarperCollins Ltd in London Reprinted by arrangement with Basic Books a division of

HarperCollins Publishers Inc

The Swedish Publishers Association amp the Stockholm University Library

being the Trustees of the Adam Helms Collection of Books on Publishing and Bookselling

are sponsoring an annual lecture on subjects related to the collection

This is the first Adam Helms Lecture given at Stockholm University April 21st 1994

Published by The Swedish Publishers Association amp Ordfront Publ House

Printed in 999 copies

copy by Robert Darnton 1994

PRINTED BY Faiths tryckeri Vaumlrnamo 1995

GRAPHIC DESIGN BY Christer Hellmark

TYPEFACE Doves Type 1216

PAPER Bokpapper Linneacute 115 g COVER Tumba Tre Kronor 225 g

ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E

The text is set in Doves Type-95 similar to the typeface created by Emery Walker and used by

Thomas J Cobden-Sanderson at their Doves Press 1900mdash1916 The type was cut in roman only by

Edward Prince and there was never an accompanying italic The revival of the Doves Type in

PostScript format has been made by Torbjoumlrn Olsson who has also designed a new italic

The drop caps are set in Adobe Charlemagne by Carol Twombly

Robert Darnton

JSKtr



East Germany 1989

T H E A D A M H E L M S L E C T U R E 1994

Robert Darnton



East Germany 1989


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East Germany 1989


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O Erich Honecker




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FOREIGN LITERATURE

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O Erich Honecker




DIVISIONS

SECTORS GDR

CULTURAL HERITAGE


ART AND MUSIC

FOREIGN LITERATURE

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rature
























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amendment

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by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E


































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readers read i














31







B A L I S M






















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Stalin at home














33














































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36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E


































27





























28





























29



























30















readers read i














31







B A L I S M






















32














Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E


































28





























29



























30















readers read i














31







B A L I S M






















32














Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E


































29



























30















readers read i














31







B A L I S M






















32














Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E
































30















readers read i














31







B A L I S M






















32














Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E




















readers read i














31







B A L I S M






















32














Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E












B A L I S M






















32














Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E



















Stalin at home














33














































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E



















































35





























36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E


































36








amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E













amendment

N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E






N O T E S













38


by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E







by Robert Darnton
















ISBN 91-7324-495-3

ABOUT T H E T Y P E






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